Worldmaking (76 page)

On the first two of these issues, Cheney charged Wolfowitz with the task of reviewing defense policy in light of Gorbachev's historic actions through 1988. The report that emerged counseled caution with a simple justification—it was too early to ascertain with certainty what was actually happening within the Soviet Union. On April 4, 1989, George Kennan repudiated this caution during testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In an effusive article for
The Washington Post
, titled “Kennan—A Prophet Honored,” Mary McGrory depicted a remarkable scene:

Grandeur on Capitol Hill? Yes, it sometimes happens. George F. Kennan, the world's greatest authority on the Soviet Union, appeared last week before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and discoursed with such lucidity, learning and large-mindedness that the senators did not want to let him go. Kennan is 85 now. His back is as straight as a young man's, his jaw as chiseled. Only the cloudy voice bespeaks age. What made his appearance more remarkable was that the speaker was as grateful as the audience.
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Kennan's gratitude likely stemmed from the fact that he had been provided a high-profile forum from which to criticize present policy. His opening statement announced unequivocally that the Soviet Union was no longer a threat to American interests:

What we are witnessing today in Russia is the breakup of much, if not all, of the system of power by which that country has been held together and governed since 1917 … The arsenals of nuclear weapons now in the possession of the Soviet Union and the United States are plainly vastly redundant in relation to the purpose they are supposed to serve … In summary, it appears to me that whatever reasons may once have been for regarding the Soviet Union primarily as a possible, if not probable, military opponent, the time for that sort of thing has clearly passed.
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So while some in the Bush administration had doubts about the sincerity and durability of Gorbachev's actions, Kennan had none. The committee and the audience rose at the end of Kennan's testimony to deliver a standing ovation. They liked his optimism and implicit message: the United States had won the Cold War because a weary Soviet Union had decided not to fight any longer. A month later the president declared his agreement. In a commencement address at Texas A&M University on May 13, Bush paid warm tribute to Kennan and the other architects of America's containment policy. Concurring with the gist of Kennan's testimony—rejecting the caution of Wolfowitz and others—Bush declared that it was time to move “beyond containment.” “We seek the integration of the Soviet Union into the community of nations,” he declared. “Ultimately, our objective is to welcome the Soviet Union back into the world order.”
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Outlining his general approach to foreign policy—and lack of interest in pursuing grandiose strategies—Bush had remarked in 1980, “I am a practical man. I like what's real. I'm not much for the airy and abstract. I like what works. I am not a mystic, and I do not yearn to lead a crusade.”
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For the first time in a long time, Kennan and a president were largely in sync.

*   *   *

The foreign-policy crisis that defined Bush's presidency for posterity was the Gulf War, which was either a model of diplomatic élan or a missed opportunity depending on one's point of view.
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On August 2, 1990, Saddam Hussein ordered the invasion of Kuwait to forcibly wrest back a territory—and the oil reserves and access to the sea it provided—that he viewed as historically Iraq's. Saddam did not anticipate a strong American response, which perhaps was understandable. Eight days prior to the invasion, April Glaspie, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told him directly: “We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait … I have direct instructions from President Bush to improve our relations with Iraq. We have considerable sympathy for your quest for higher oil prices, the immediate cause of your confrontation with Kuwait.”
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The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell, appeared to confirm Saddam's confidence as well-founded the day after the invasion. He told General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, head of U.S. Central Command, “I think we'd go to war over Saudi Arabia, but I doubt we'd go to war over Kuwait.” Powell was wrong. When he counseled caution during the first National Security Council meeting called to discuss the crisis, Dick Cheney slapped him down: “Colin, you're chairman of the Joint Chiefs. You're not secretary of state. You're not the national security adviser. And you're not secretary of defense. So stick to military matters.”
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Twelve years later, Colin Powell
was
secretary of state. And his call for caution in Iraq was similarly ignored, trailing off into the vacuum of inconsequence that separates Foggy Bottom from the White House.

Powell was out of step with idealists
and
realists on how to respond to Iraq's aggression in the summer of 1990; his voice was a lonely one. Dick Cheney argued that Iraq's annexation of Kuwait had transformed the nation into the major oil power in the Middle East—a transformation that intolerably threatened U.S economic interests and the regional stability that sustained them. Brent Scowcroft and James Baker focused on what the former described as “the ramifications of the aggression on the emerging post–Cold War world.”
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The Soviet Union was no longer a threat to the United States, but for Washington to ignore this crisis was unthinkable. Its credibility as a guarantor and peacemaker would be seriously harmed, and this might embolden other second-tier adversaries. This was certainly the view of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who famously urged President Bush “not to go wobbly” when America's prestige was so clearly at stake.
90
Paul Wolfowitz's Carter-era prophecies, meanwhile, had apparently been vindicated in dramatic fashion. Saddam Hussein was fulfilling the early bellicose promise that Wolfowitz had been the first to identify. With Powell the sole dissenting voice within the administration, some form of military intervention was never really in doubt. “This will not stand,” President Bush declared, “this aggression against Kuwait.”
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Sensing the worst, as was his wont, George Kennan wrote on December 16, “Mr. Bush continues to entangle us all in a dreadful involvement in the Persian Gulf to which no favorable outcome is visible or even imaginable … At the moment, it is hard to see anything ahead but a military-political disaster.”
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As it turned out, the president and his advisers managed the conflict more skillfully than Kennan could have imagined. The first thing Bush did in preparation for war was assemble a vast coalition to assist the United States in removing Iraq from Kuwait. Some partners, such as Japan and Germany, contributed treasure, not blood. Some, such as the Soviet Union, lent neither, but crucially did not oppose military action against a traditional ally of Moscow—real evidence that Gorbachev was true to his peacemaking word. Across the Middle East, Syria, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia all endorsed U.S. military action, while Israel, crucially, promised to hold fire in response to inevitable Iraqi missile attacks using outdated but dangerous Soviet-supplied Scuds. Convincing Israel of the need for patience, which Wolfowitz played a significant role in achieving through a series of trips to Tel Aviv, reduced the possibility of direct Israeli involvement, a wider war, and the destruction of the coalition. In total, President Bush assembled an alliance of nearly fifty nations to help wage and finance the war and secured a UN resolution authorizing the use of force. He also rejected Dick Cheney's advice that congressional authorization was unnecessary, winning a majority of 250 to 183 in the House and 52 to 47 in the Senate. The preparatory diplomacy was exemplary. So what of the military campaign itself?

Operation Desert Storm was launched on January 16, 1991, in dramatic style, with a devastating salvo of Tomahawk missiles and laser-guided bombs dropped by Stealth F-117 aircraft that targeted Iraq's air bases and electrical and communications networks. This aerial bombardment lasted until February 24, when forces from the U.S.-led coalition entered Kuwait from Saudi Arabia and engaged Iraqi troop concentrations. The land invasion spanned only one hundred hours, the time it took for the demoralized Iraqi army to cut, run, and concede defeat in the face of overwhelming odds—Goliath won this particular matchup. American fatalities amounted to just over one hundred, Iraqi losses numbered between twenty thousand and thirty-five thousand. This one-sided war was similar in its decisiveness to America's crushing defeat of Spain in 1898.

In advance of the cease-fire, tens of thousands of Iraqi troops fled Kuwait down the so-called highway of death. Colin Powell urged Schwarzkopf, for reasons of honor and civility, not to destroy these fleeing troops, as easy and as injurious to Saddam Hussein's rule as that would have been.
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Secretary of State James Baker had a vivid recollection of Powell's objections to continuing the slaughter: “I remember Colin Powell saying with a trace of emotion, ‘We're killing literally
thousands
of people.'”
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Deputy National Security Adviser Robert Gates remembered “very clearly Colin Powell saying that this thing was turning into a massacre. And that to continue it beyond a certain point would be un-American, and he even used the word ‘unchivalrous.'”
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President Bush heeded Powell's advice and ordered the coalition forces to stand down.

Wolfowitz was unhappy that the war ended so swiftly, having fewer qualms than Powell—his lack of military experience might have limited his imagination—about strafing the departing Iraqi troops. He was certainly correct to a point in believing that a medium-scale slaughter might have prevented a larger one later. Wolfowitz's deputy, Scooter Libby, said, “We objected to it. I was floored by the decision. Neither of us liked it.” But neither man was close enough to the action to make a difference. A few days after hostilities ceased, the CIA reported that many of Saddam's elite fighting forces, the Republican Guard, had escaped Kuwait with significant supplies: at least 365 Soviet T-72 tanks crossed back into Iraq, and an entire division, the Hammurabi, remained intact. General Schwarzkopf also granted a foolish concession to Iraq by permitting its helicopters to transport Iraqi officials across Kuwait and Iraq. Saddam ruthlessly exploited this loophole, ordering helicopter gunships to crush Shiite and Kurdish forces that were assembling to launch a revolution, encouraged by the earlier words of President Bush and Secretary Baker suggesting that they rise in revolt.

Wolfowitz observed, “Simply by delaying the ceasefire agreement—without killing more Iraqi troops or destroying more Iraqi military assets—the United States might have bought time for opposition to Saddam Hussein to build and to act against him.”
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But while delay appeared a savvy option with the benefit of hindsight, it was never actively considered at the time. Scowcroft and Baker believed that civil war in Iraq would have negative unintended consequences, including a substantial strengthening of Iran's position in the Middle East. Employing a rationale that Kissinger and Kennan would have cheered, Powell explained, “Our practical intention was to leave Baghdad enough power to survive as a threat to an Iran that remained bitterly hostile toward the United States.”
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As for an invasion of Iraq and the ouster of Saddam Hussein, this was viewed at the time as implausible: vexing in design and execution, and unknowable in consequence. As Bush wrote in his memoir, coauthored with Scowcroft, “Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different—and perhaps barren—outcome.”
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Many hawkish Republicans, including the president's own son, would challenge this classically realist interpretation. Donald Rumsfeld, for example, presents a strong case against Bush-Scowcroft pragmatism: “For his part, Saddam Hussein came to believe that the United States lacked the commitment to follow through on its rhetoric. He saw America as unwilling to take the risks necessary for an invasion of Iraq.”
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But public opinion at the time in the United States and across the world saw things rather differently—the Gulf War was a resounding success for America and the coalition. Clear-cut aggression, the crossing of an established international border, had been met with a resolute response, sanctioned by the United Nations and carrying the crucial support of Moscow, Cairo, and Damascus. It was a remarkable achievement all considered. Rumsfeld's assessment was not so much written as bloated with hindsight. Nonetheless, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz all learned a lesson that they applied to the Second Iraq War: Colin Powell and similarly risk-averse generals had to be detached from decision making.

*   *   *

On August 19, 1991, hard-line communists launched a coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, placing him under house arrest at his dacha in the Crimea and ordering tanks and infantry to assume strategic positions in Moscow. Boris Yeltsin became the focal point of resistance, famously standing atop a tank across from Russia's White House in a catalyzing act of defiance. The coup collapsed in the face of popular antipathy and Gorbachev returned to Moscow, though not in triumph. On August 21, Yeltsin requested that Gorbachev read a statement outlining details of the coup against him—a request that was hard to turn down in the circumstances. The following day, Gorbachev resigned as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, though he retained his position as the Soviet Union's titular president. Over the course of the next few months, Ukraine, Armenia, Georgia, and Moldova moved swiftly to secure their independence from Moscow. On December 8, political leaders from Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus met at Belovezh Forest, near Minsk, to form a Commonwealth of Independent States—others would soon join. On December 25, Gorbachev resigned as president of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Hammer and Sickle was lowered from the Kremlin and the blue, white, and red tricolor of the Russian Federation was raised to take its place. Boris Yeltsin was now assuredly in charge. The once solid Soviet Union had melted into air.